How to Transform Your Fireplace Mantel

Our gas fireplace tried to pull one over on me.  It decided it would put soot all over my house!  The nerve!  But I have a back up plan…..it’s called I’ll paint right over you!

As you can see from the photos it was a nasty mess.  All this happened over the course of a few days.  So frustrating.  Now that it’s fixed, with a new set of logs, I realize I have to repaint and clean most of everything in this house.  Honestly I haven’t really come to terms with this fact.  I’m just taking baby steps and tackling one room at a time.  Our living room just happens to be lucky room number one.

I thought I might be able to just scrape and clean the soot off.  Fail.  I ended up just scraping a layer of paint off in some areas and not being able to get if off in others.  So I prepped the surface by cleaning it with Krud Kutter and broke out the Annie Sloan in Pure White.  I really wanted to paint he mantle gray but hubby wanted white again so white it is.

You know the whole, “if you give a mouse a cookie thing?”  Well, that ‘s what tends to happen to me because shortly after I decided to repaint the mantle I remembered I had a stack of frames in the laundry room now for almost a year I’d gotten at a thrift store not too long ago.  I collected them with the intention of painting them all to match and then putting them on the mantle.  GAME ON!

I applied one coat of Pure White to the mantle and then while it was drying I set all the frames out and painted them with Duck Egg.  This color…well it’s in my top 5 favorite colors.

I have several other things in the room that are painted with Duck Egg and my goal this year is to make things in my home feel more cohesive and less I went to a thrift store and bought random thingsish mismatched.

After they were dry I put another coat of Pure White on the mantle and then dry brushed a little of it on the frames so they would blend in a little better.

I added a few accessories and then called it a day!

I found this printable quote over at Todays Fabulous Finds. There are some great printables there so hop over and see if you like any of them for your home.

Ahhh nice and simple.  Now to clean the walls and decide if they’ll have to be repainted too.